Letters from our readers

20 April 2013

The final two paragraphs of this report point out the contrast between the attitudes of the bourgeoisie in 1776, and today.

As Trotsky noted in Results and Prospects (1906), “The bourgeoisie has shamefully betrayed all the traditions of its historical youth, and its present hirelings dishonour the graves of its ancestors and scoff at the ashes of its ideals.”

It is important to stress that Thatcher was able to have her way with Britain because the post-war reformist agenda had become bogged down in its own contradictions.

Thatcher’s death should not give rise to any nostalgia for “Old” Labour and the heyday of the nationalist, sectoral trades unions. By the end of the 1970s something had to give. If it had not been Thatcher, the bourgeoisie would have found someone else to do the job.

Good reminder, if one is needed, on the run-up to the local elections in the UK of why the Greens can’t be trusted to defend services and jobs. This is not down to either hypocrisy or political cowardice when faced with having to make decisions; in fact, the Greens are a pro-capitalist party.

OK, they may desire a greener capitalism, just as the reformists want a fairer capitalism, but what you want and what you get are two different things. As long as they accept this, then they will be trapped into making cuts because this is what capitalists do in an attempt to restore the decline in the rate of profit.

The only alternative is not to look to electoral politics, but to direct class-conscious action, which sets the objective as being the smashing of all capitalist states and their replacement with a network of soviet-based states.